The author picked a perfect title for this novel. Only Revolutionssays it all. And what is a revolution? Ah, a revolution is the violentoverthrow of a current regime. But I'm thinking of a different meaningof 'revolution'—namely the process of going round and round butnever arriving anywhere.

The first thing that spins around in this novel isthe physical book in your hand. You need tokeep flipping it over to read the upside-downtext on the bottom of each page. The marketingcopy on the book flap suggests you do thisevery 8 pages, but you can choose anotherpace for your revolution—the experiencedoesn't change much. But if you decide to flipit over on every page, you will have made 360revolutions, one for each degree in a circle.

Pretty clever, huh?

And just in case you didn't appreciate thebeauty of this, let me point out that every page is divided into twosymmetrical narratives, each one consisting of 90 words—thuspresenting 180 words on the entire page. And in order to read thebook, you must open up the volume to see the facing page as well. Thus you are now staring at 360 words.

Why didn't anyone think of doing that before?

Here are some other key ingredients to Only Revolutions:

(1) Every letter 'O' or number zero is presented in a different colorfrom the rest of the text.

(2) Whenever a word begins with the letter 'A' followed by theletter 'L', the 'L' is doubled—hence 'allone', 'allready' and 'allways'.

(4) Other familiar terms are replaced with code words. For example,the verb 'to die' is replaced by the verb 'to go'.

(5) The word 'us' is always (allways) presented in all caps; hence'US'.

(6) This gives US an edge in the eternal battle of 'us versusthem', because 'them' in these pages only has its initial lettercapitalized; hence 'Them'.

(7) A timeline of historical events and sports results, covering theperiod from 1863 until the date of publication, is provided in themargins of all 360 pages.

(8) Every time a character drives a car, it is a different make andmodel. Sometimes they change cars more than once on a singlepage. Characters are also allowed to ride bicycles, but air travelis apparently forbidden. (Note: the protagonists do manageto cross the Atlantic Ocean, but without explanation of their modeof transportation.)

(9) The author inserts hundreds of animal and plant names intothe book, although without any attempt to integrate them into thestory.

Oh yes, the story. You want to know more about the story? Sad tosay, there's not much to report. Instead of plot, we merely haveincidents, and even these are described with little clarity orprecision. Sentences appear without clear subjects or objects. Dialogue is transcribed but the reader is left to guess who isspeaking the lines. And the characters are little more than stickfigures. In most instances, Danielewski won't even give Themnames. They remain merely Them. Other characters areassigned vague labels, such as The Creep or Dying Hope. (By the way, I’m told that the author originally considered the nameTHAT for his novel, which gives you a sense of the intentionalvagueness of the story.)

But we do have two protagonists, and they are given actualnames. Sam and Hailey go on a trip together, and each narratesa separate first-person account on the two halves of the page. Inother words, this book contains two novels—you’re readingOnly Revolutions by Sam if you hold the book one way, but if youflip it over, you’re now reading Only Revolutions by Hailey.

This basic idea of presenting two different versions of the samestory must have seemed promising when Danielewski firstconceived of it. As Derrida once said—or, at least, should havesaid if he didn't actually say it—two unreliable narrators are betterthan one. Didn't Kurosawa work wonders with this concept inRashomon? But you won't get very far into this book beforerealizing that Danielewski is no Kurosawa. This novel is morelike the Monty Python routine about the man who pays for a visitto the argument clinic, but only gets mindless contradictions forhis money. There is little nuance or subtlety here. In Hailey'saccount, for example, she tells us that the wimpy Sam got sickat the side of the road. In Sam’s account, he tells us that thequeasy Hailey got sick at the side of the road. In Sam's narrative,he boasts of his skills as a lover, but Hailey, in her version ofthe story, says he’s a lousy lover. Etc. etc.

And who are Sam and Hailey? While reading this book, I kepttrying to answer that question. Danielewski doesn't give us muchhelp. We are told that Sam and Hailey are always (allways)sixteen years old, but we learn nothing about parents or family orschool or hobbies. They don't seem to have any of those ties or encumbrances. But they do talk. And they make pronouncements suitable for an angry Sumerian deity or perhaps Donald Rumsfeldon a bad day, such as:

In other words, this isn't your typical teenage romance. But beforelong, our strange couple is cruising in their ever-changingautomobile again, with occasional roadstops for various formsof recreation.

Do Sam and Hailey have some deeper symbolic meaning? I'veheard many theories, and tried out a few of my own. While readingthis novel, I long held out hope that some simple answer, such aswe find with the mysterious identity of the swimmer in John Barth's"Night-Sea Journey” (who turns out to be a sperm), would unlock allthe hidden meaning in the text. But, alas, this proved to be aDying Hope. As with Shem and Shaun in Finnegans Wake, any interpretation that works in elucidating the meaning of Hailey andSam in one passage will fail when applied to another. Again andagain, we are forced back to deal with these characters on thesurface level of the book, and there they are presented with aflatness and imprecision that make a Happy Days rerun look likeMadame Bovary by comparison.

What is left to grab the reader's attention here? Well, Mr.Danielewski breaks up the lines, as though his book is poetrynot prose. And occasionally he comes up with a poetic turn ofphrase or clever bit of wordplay. But the deadness (go-ness)of the imagery here ultimately subverts even his best efforts. There is hardly a single page in this book where the reader canvisualize what is happening, let alone (allone) fit the circumstancespresented into a holistic vision of the story. For these reason,and many others, Only Revolutions will not be televised. Yousimply can't grok what it looks like, not to mention what it means. We don't get anything akin to “a red wheel barrow glazed inrain water” or “petals on a wet, black bough.” Can you write greatpoetry or a prose poem or (especially) fiction without specificityor plausible connection to lived reality? Can you rely on characterswithout personal history or depth, who act like abstractions? Perhaps, but Danielewski doesn't make a good case for it inthese pages.

In short, this novel is a mess. This pains me to admit. I wasdeeply impressed by Danielewski's House of Leaves, which isone of the finest novels of recent years. But his follow-up effort isone of the worst, perhaps the most tedious novel of the 21st century. Even so, I stuck it out to the bitter end, despite my Dying Hope,and read every last word. Alas, the particular curse of this book,is that after only one turn around its infernal ferris wheel you feellike you've read it twice or thrice. Only revolutions? Well, maybe. But next time I’ll sign up with the counterrevolutionaries.

Why Only Revolutions Will Not Be Televised

by Ted Gioia

fractious fiction

a website devoted to radical, unconventional and experimental fiction with a particular focus on the rise of modernism and its aftermath.